The owners of one of Dublin’s main city centre car parks have launched a legal action aimed at overturning a plan to ban traffic from around College Green.

Fleet Street Car Park Ltd, a Galway company that owns a large facility in Temple Bar, has lodged papers in the High Court seeking a judicial review of the plan to create a new “bus gate” in the city centre and to limit certain streets to pedestrians, bicycles and public transport during peak periods on Monday to Friday.

Although the proposal, already approved by Dublin city council, would allow cars to access facilities such as parking, it is proving unpopular with businesses, which claim it will lead to a drop-off in trade.

Officially titled the Public Transport Gate, the scheme is designed to prevent private road transport from passing between Bank of Ireland headquarters and Trinity College at College Green by diverting it on other routes. Work has already started at the site.

Legal papers were filed with the High Court earlier this month and the case is listed for mention on July 20. Fleet Street Car Park Ltd did not return calls this weekend.

It is not known if the parking firm is planning to seek an injunction to prevent the project going ahead before the judicial review is heard.

Voted through earlier this year by councillors, the public transport gate has been supported by environmental campaigners who say it will improve the city centre for cyclists, pedestrians, public-transport users and shoppers.

Tom Coffey, chairman of the Dublin City Business Association (DCBA), welcomed the legal action. He said that while traders were not “against the bus gate”, they are opposed to the way the project was being delivered. The DCBA has argued that alternative car routes need to be developed, including bridges over the River Liffey, before the street closures in order to allow traffic to continue to move freely through the city centre.

“It is unfortunate that political ideology at central government level overcame a rational approach of installing the Samuel Beckett and Marlborough Street bridges in advance, so that there could be a really good restructuring of traffic routes in the city centre,” Coffey said.

Ciaran Cuffe, a Green party TD and spokesman on transport, criticised the legal action. “We should not be protecting car parks at the cost of bus users,” he said.

It was originally planned to operate the scheme on a full-time basis but this was changed to peak hours only after lobbying. Advocates claim that by reducing private cars, the scheme will enhance the civic amenity of College Green, which is considered Dublin’s finest architectural ensemble.

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